Tag: machine learning

With Paul the Octopus, Nelly the Elephant and now Achilles the Cat predicting match results, animal intuition has been reigning popular for forecasting game outcomes. However, predicting match results in a dynamic sports field poses an interesting challenge for data scientists and experts in machine learning. A wide range of variables could swing the…

Every new product or feature release requires a comprehensive compilation of technical help responses; it ensures that users can have their questions answered, troubleshoot problems or even modify the application as per their needs. With a vast and global user base, some queries are likely to be asked more frequently than others. Classifying technical queries…

Emotions run deep in every conversation we humans have. Deciphering these underlying emotions is the key to making machine interactions more human. Detecting emotions in text is difficult enough for human beings, let alone artificially created machines, as many of our emotions are conveyed through expressions and tone of voice. At Microsoft, we are working…

Whether you call them conversational agents, dialog systems, or chatbots, AI-powered bots that can hold human-like conversations are seeping into our everyday lives. Chatbots work well in a structured environment with a predetermined dataset. Answering simple questions, for example, would be a task a chatbot could excel at. Which is why chatbots are now replacing…

Underneath the layer of factual information and numerical data is a deeper, more personal Internet. The online world comprises vast data and information resources and our search engines are adept at crawling through it and finding answers. But what if a user needs more than just a straightforward answer? What if the user needs insights…

Machine learning and big data are revolutionizing the simplest of everyday applications and platforms. Perhaps the most conventional everyday platform is SMS. SMSes have been around since the days of the feature phone. Deeply rooted in traditional mobile computing, 800 million people use the platform daily. However, nearly 95% of these messages are spam or…

Winner of the PAKDD 2017 Best Paper Award The humble search bar is the window through which most Internet users experience the web. Deep learning is set to enhance the capabilities of this simple tool such that search engines can now anticipate what the user is looking for whilst moderating offensive suggestions before the query…

A wide gap has always existed between how we talk with each other and the way we communicate with search engines. If we were to talk to search engines like regular human beings, we’d expect them to understand us at the same level too. Say, you asked a friend to suggest a nice restaurant. She…

What if a patient has undergone an eye surgery only to discover a residual refractive error as a side effect later? While the surgery may have corrected the near-sightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism, post-operative tests may show poor uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA) indicating that a refractive error persists. Data recorded during patient examination has the potential…

SMS has always shared a significant problem with emails – spam. SMSes are so frequent and often so frivolous, many of them go unnoticed. Some of them can be quite annoying, as Microsoft’s Garage team member Ashish Shah discovered. Ashish frequently missed essential SMSes in a torrent of unnecessary spam. Despite his best efforts, he…